FUMSI Features

• MeetWays
  I feel like I had been looking for an application like MeetWays for years, and I almost cried with joy when I finally found it. Enter two geographic locations - cities, addresses, etc. - and enter a point of interest - coffee, restaurant, hotel, bar - and MeetWays finds the perfect middle point to meet. Extra cool because it provides global coverage.
  
  
• Yauba
  Yauba is one of many social network searches, but try a search on a company like Oracle. It will tell you "what Yauba knows" about Oracle, and suggest a more targeted search for Oracle Corporation (which is what I was looking for). Yauba breaks the results into categories, and pulls an amazing array of information, including documents, social information, and people.
  
  
• Information is Beautiful
  This blog provides - truly - beautiful and striking data visualizations, thanks to David McCandless, a London-based author, writer and designer.
  
  
• Almost.at
  Almost.at allows you to follow real-time events via Twitter, photos, videos and links. For example, I'm looking at the streams from Comic-Con - and I didn't need to track down any hashtags, tags or sites. Almost.at provides international coverage as well - currently, besides Comic-Con, I can check out the Forum Internacional do Software and the Melbourne International Film Festival. I can also find streams from recent events, such as the iPhone 4 Press Conference, Tri Nations Rugby, and the World Cup Finals.
  
  
• PostSecret
  PostSecret feels like my secret Sunday indulgence, though, in writing this, I guess that secret is out of the bag. PostSecret describes itself as "an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard". Not a Sunday goes by without reading something that really touches me. PostSecret also raises a lot of money for suicide prevention.

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The law touches many aspects of information work, and legal work is about as information-intensive as business gets. For both of these reasons, information-related law and resources to serve legal information professionals come up regularly in VIP. Two recent features examine UK-based resources in particular, and upcoming features explore even further afield to international legal resources.

In June, VIP returned to an in-depth comparative review of Westlaw UK and LexisLibrary. Reviewer Diane Raper noted that both of 'The Big Two' cannot afford complacency with regard to their customers or market-share. 'We all have to look very carefully at what we spend our budgets on. Is it really necessary to have both of the major legal online services?' she comments in her LiveWire posting.

In Raper's opinion, both vendors are pushing forward with next-generation features, but '...Westlaw UK currently seems to be further down this path and have dropped the print legacy and are developing a very clear interface that links different parts of their data offering well.'

If you work in a law library, this is one report you can't afford to overlook. Purchase the VIP Report: Comparative Review of LexisLibrary and Westlaw UK from the FreePint Shop (£39 for single-site use, plus VAT where applicable).

July's VIP takes on the UK market for legal products with a more intimate look at users' perspective. An executive summary of the FreePint Report: UK Law Library Preferences highlights the findings of research on the top 200 firms in the UK (by revenue) in terms of what their libraries want and need in products. In addition to satisfaction ratings on The Big Two and Practical Law Company, we asked respondents for information on their budgets, internal challenges for making purchase decisions, and ratios for fee earners compared with information professionals.

VIP subscribers receive a copy of the full research report with their subscription, or purchase it on its own in the FreePint Shop.

Although both of these research projects home in on the UK market, they are more broadly relevant. Any international firm with a UK presence will find them useful, and further, they provide a focused view of a single market that can serve as a basis for comparison in other markets.

Looking beyond the United Kingdom, though, is essential for VIP: Future editorial plans call for an in-depth review of Bloomberg Law, the latest entrant into the marketplace for comprehensive legal information. Initial comment from VIP subscribers has been very positive, and we're anxious to get a researcher digging into the product.

In a field where time is literally money, greater efficiency leads to greater revenue. Workflow-embedded products like Practical Law Company's offerings and Lexis PSL address the need to provide legal professionals with resources that do more than deliver information. A comparative review of the two is in the works for later this year as well.

Not yet a VIP subscriber? Start a trial today.

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Resource of the Week - Butterscotch.com

It has become increasingly acknowledged that not everyone has the same learning style. Butterscotch is a website which, through many free video tutorials, instructs in the use of all kinds of hardware and software. Its visual emphasis also allows for a quick comparison between your computer or device and the tutorial. And of course the video can be replayed as many times as necessary.

The Tutorials section is tailored to accomplishing specific tasks or examining the possibilities of certain software. The presenters/narrators have a common style, concise and using everyday language. Topics that need to be covered in more depth are usually broken down into a series of short videos rather than one long one. The Tutorials section also shares with the Shows section the quality of there being something for everyone, no matter their level of technical knowledge.

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